National Science Foundation Collaboration

The NSF is a lead collaborator with the Institute for Triple Helix Innovation on a funded study exploring innovation and virtual networks. The research (“Examining the Link between Informal Social Networks and Innovation: Using Netometrics to Quantify the Value of a Distributed Hetarchical Network”) focuses on the nature of informal interaction in a virtual network in order to better understand how interaction contributes to innovation between scientists and innovators. If virtual networks are shown to facilitate innovation, they constitute a low-cost investment with great promise for accelerating cross-cutting efficiencies, social missions and economic growth. This initiative supports transformational science, interdisciplinary and cross-sector, cross-cultural collaboration.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 "to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense" With an annual budget of about $5.92 billion, the NSF funds approximately 20 percent of all federally supported basic research conducted by AmericaÂ’s colleges and universities. Each year, NSF supports an average of about 200,000 scientists, engineers, educators and students at universities, laboratories and field sites all over the United States and throughout the world.

NSF's goals--discovery, learning, research infrastructure and stewardship--provide an integrated strategy to advance the frontiers of knowledge, cultivate a world-class, broadly inclusive science and engineering workforce and expand the scientific literacy of all citizens, build the nation's research capability through investments in advanced instrumentation and facilities, and support excellence in science and engineering research and education through a capable and responsive organization.